Death in Holy Orders

BookPage® Column by Sukey Howard

Take a new Adam Dalgliesh mystery by P. D. James that's unabridged and read by Charles Keating in his polished, silver-smooth British voice and you have all the elements to delight an audio listener. This happy convergence comes about in Death in Holy Orders, James' 17th book that once again puts her crime fiction in an eloquent class of its own. Asked to look into the death of a young ordinand at a small, elite theological college on the windswept coast of East Anglia, Commander Dalgliesh returns to St. Anselm's where he spent idyllic summers as a boy. But his quiet, circumspect investigation quickly changes when a visiting, and much disliked, archdeacon is found violently murdered and ritually laid out in the church. Everyone, from the students to the resident priests, is under suspicion, and Dalgliesh knows he's up against an extraordinarily clever and ruthless killer.